Easier to find and cheaper to buy: What’s behind the rising popularity of cocaine?

Sunday, 22 February 2026

Cheaper, easier to find and better quality: coke still has a glamorous image, but data suggests its no longer confined to the elite. Stewart Sowman-Lund investigates.

For the average New Zealander, it was something from the movies, from tabloid scandals, or the preserve of the very rich.

But cocaine use is on the rise on our shores: data shows people are using it more regularly, finding it more easily, and paying less for it.

Anecdotally, it’s also said to be of higher quality than it once was, with New Zealand now seen as a viable trafficking destination after previously being left off the circuit.

Previously, the fine white powder - a class A drug in-line with methamphetamine - was largely seen as unaffordable or not worth buying, if you could get it at all.

Workplace parties aren’t yet turning into scenes from the Wolf of Wall Street, but cocaine is becoming more accessible: in reporting this story, we heard at least two anecdotes about parents at school events in Auckland being caught in the toilets snorting the illicit drug.

Meanwhile, this, from one Wellington professional: “It used to be very hard to get down here, but you can't turn around now without being offered a new dealer. It's like a Briscoes leaflet in your mailbox.”

Or one Aucklander, who claims there are people in this circle who “always get it or have it, which would tell me there is a bit around”.

A police officer, speaking anonymously, adds that cocaine is - in general - becoming “readily available” and “cheap”. An ex-cop says simply: “The cartels are here now.”

This hasn’t been an overnight change. Data from national surveys, along with legal drug checking services, shows year-on-year increases.

Cocaine is now firmly the third-most detected drug (behind MDMA and ketamine, but ahead of LSD) by Know Your Stuff, the drug checking service that operates free clinics at public events. One major survey, meanwhile, shows that while regular cocaine use remains dwarfed by methamphetamine and cannabis, it has comfortably overtaken MDMA.

It’s also most popular among wealthier New Zealanders, but while stereotypically an urban drug, is gradually becoming more accessible outside main centres.

Cheaper, stronger and easier to find

Dr Jai Whelan is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Otago, who wrote his PhD on the use of MDMA in New Zealand. He’s broadly interested in how drugs are consumed across the board, and he’s also open about his own use of recreational drugs.

“They’re fun … that’s certainly why I do it,” he says, when asked why people might choose to take substances like cocaine.

“It's definitely more accessible and more available … I don't think it's too out there to say that at a kind of looser Friday drinks after work that some people might supplement their experience with cocaine.”

While in-depth data on illicit drug use isn’t always easy to come by - especially when it comes to questions of quality and quantity - there are some ways we can tell what is growing or shrinking in popularity.

The latest Drugs Trends Survey, released in January, revealed cocaine supply and use was trending upwards. That was noted across the country, and not just in the main urban areas that may be more commonly linked to a drug like cocaine.

Professor Chris Wilkins is the leader of the drug research team at Massey University’s SHORE & Whariki Research Centre, the group behind the Drugs Trends Survey.

He says that the percentage of respondents reporting that cocaine was easy to get increased from 17% in 2018 to 43% in 2025 while the proportion using cocaine at least weekly increased from 6% to 10% over the same period.

“So I think everyone just anecdotally agrees that availability has increased. Before the 2000s cocaine was a very rare drug in New Zealand … now people are noticeably seeing that more of it is about.”

Whelan says that he has personally experienced “greater availability” of cocaine, and at a lower price. Generally speaking, he adds, it has also been of better quality.

“If I'm buying something, it's cheaper. If I'm buying something, there's more of it available. It's being touted more often by various people,” he says.

“I'm seeing it out there, out and about, more often - in the clubs or at events. I really love going out to live music events or DJ gigs, and it's out there.”

That’s been a noticeable change, he believes, saying that previously it was most often MDMA being offered in these situations.

Otherwise known as ecstasy, MDMA has - in New Zealand - often substituted cocaine in settings where the latter may traditionally have been taken, Whelan says.

“That's certainly what some of my research has communicated - that a lot of people like to snort [MDMA]. They'll snort it as if it's cocaine alongside their drinking. But I think as the price [of cocaine] goes down, I think people will be willing to do that switch.”

Cocaine has a particular image attached to it; where MDMA, which is also a stimulant, has long been seen as a young person’s party drug, cocaine has often been associated with wealthier, business-types - from stockbrokers in the 1980s to “yuppies” in the financial industry, says Fiona Hutton, a criminology expert at Victoria University.

“It's always had this slightly glamorous image of being associated with people who are wealthy,” she says.

“It's certainly been around for a number of years in the club and party scene [in] Europe, the US, Australia and a little bit in New Zealand.”

Our geographical isolation has prevented it from exploding in popularity here, with prices kept high as a result of limited supply. “We're not on trafficking routes, like European countries are, and the US. But it's always been around. It's never been a massively popular drug in the New Zealand context … that could be changing.”

We use what we can get

There’s another source of data that shows a trend: what we flush down the toilet. Much like how testing of sewage helped draw conclusions about the spread of Covid-19 during the pandemic, it can also paint a picture of what illicit drugs are being used by New Zealanders.

Wastewater testing from the third quarter of 2025 showed cocaine outpacing MDMA consumption for the first time ever, says Sarah Helm from the NZ Drug Foundation.

The wastewater data averaged an estimated 6.4 kilograms per week, 43% (or 1.9 kilograms) above the average quantity consumed over the previous four quarters.

“It does represent a significant shift,” she says. “Just to put it in perspective, we still have a lower baseline, so we have lower cocaine consumption than most parts of the world.”

Helm believes the rise in use is as a result of the rise in availability. “We do tend to consume what arrives into the country,” she says. “It hasn't been available to people before, and they might glamorise that particular substance.”

While Police wouldn’t speak to the Sunday Star-Times for this story, instead requesting questions be lodged under the Official Information Act, there have been several recent notable seizures of cocaine shipments into New Zealand.

In May last year, a 25kg bust - worth approximately $9 million - was made at Lyttelton Port in Christchurch.

In November, 36kg - or about $12 million worth - was found in a container alongside legitimate goods from Brazil.

Customs also confirmed a notable uptick in seizures over the past four years.

Until 2022, the total quantity of annual seizures had “typically” been in the double digits, says Customs Manager Investigations, Dominic Adams. But in that year, just under 950kg was seized.

“Preliminary figures for 2025 show that Customs seized approximately 809 kilograms of cocaine across the year,” he says.

Cocaine is still produced primarily in South America, says Adams, but drug smuggling routes change over time as agencies like Customs put pressure on particular supply chains.

Cartels have also changed how they bring drugs into countries like New Zealand, with methods like sea freight and maritime vessels capable of bringing in larger quantities.

“Customs is increasingly seeing transnational, serious and organised crime groups undertaking large-scale drug smuggling attempts to try and build up their criminal drug markets here,” says Adams.

“This is not just a New Zealand problem – our Pacific neighbours are also being heavily targeted.”

Earlier this month, a joint operation between New Zealand, French and US authorities intercepted more than 4.2 tonnes of cocaine near French Polynesia. Intelligence suggests it was destined for New Zealand.

Still expensive, but no longer urban

“Historically”, says the Drug Foundation’s Helm, cocaine was “the drug of choice in Auckland of a particular socioeconomic group”.

However, the data suggests that it is no longer just city slickers opting to take cocaine.

“The Drugs Trend Survey is saying that it's reported more in Auckland, followed by Wellington, Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Northland,” she says.

It is, however, still most popular with wealthier individuals - 42% of users earn over $80,000 a year - which likely comes down to its market price.

“That makes it quite different from methamphetamine and cannabis in particular,” says Wilkins. “So it does seem to be the case that it is in that high income bracket.”

With an average street price of $360 per gram, cocaine would still be classified as an “expensive drug”, he says.

Methamphetamine, or P, remains significantly cheaper and has declined in price by about 40% since 2017.

“Now you can get a point of meth [0.1 grams] for about $56 - previously about $100 - so that puts it into the kind of realm of almost the cannabis [price],” says Wilkins.

“It's basically moved into the low cost kind of bracket in the market, whereas cocaine is still more exotic and much more expensive, keeping in mind that a cocaine high is fairly short.”

The effects of cocaine may only last 30 to 45 minutes, whereas methamphetamine lingers significantly longer - up to 12 hours.

Data from public drug testing shows that while MDMA remains the dominant substance detected, cocaine is again nudging up.

Know Your Stuff offers confidential and legal drug-testing services at events like music festivals and university O-weeks. The service is intended to minimise drug-related harms by allowing people who intend to take illicit substances the ability to check what they have purchased is in fact what they were seeking out.

Data provided to the Star-Times shows that cocaine detections at drug-testing increased faster than any other major drug over the past five years, more than quadrupling between 2022 and 2025 from 2.22% to 9.33% of overall samples.

Between 2024 and 2025, it increased by 4.35%.

Over the summer peak period, which includes many popular music festivals, cocaine detections again rose. The latest summer data, between December 1 2025 and January 17 2026, showed cocaine detected in just over 11.25% of samples - or little over one in nine.

It means cocaine is now comfortably the third most detected drug by the service, behind MDMA and ketamine but ahead of LSD, a hallucinogenic.

In the broader context, reiterates Victoria University’s Hutton, these numbers remain low.

“I don't think there's any need to have a massive panic about it just yet, anyway,” she says.

“We don't want to say, ‘Oh no, it's not a problem at all’. But we also want to avoid saying, ‘oh my god, it's a massive problem.”

Whelan believes that drug-checking may have helped drive the overall trend by weeding out products described as cocaine but actually something else.

“If it's not showing up as sugar immediately, then you have at least a little bit of a signal [of the quality],” he says.

“Having that kind of technology in the country probably has an effect on the market and what people are willing to pay, or whether they're willing to stay with a particular dealer if they're selling a shit product, well, they can move on. I think that's something we've seen with the MDMA market.”

Where the trend ends is less clear. Drug use fluctuates, based on factors such as availability and price. It’s possible that cocaine’s popularity may already have hit its limit; or perhaps New Zealand’s relationship with a drug once seen as unattainable will only continue to deepen.